Introduction and Construction

A few weeks ago, we dangled a little DVD Dual Layer primer (teaser?) for all of you who are looking forward to the technology.

Even though we received a preproduction sample from Sony, we have a generally good idea which media will be bundled in the final version of the drive. To no surprise, most of the Nero Express suite will ship with the final drive. This includes Nero Express 6, InCD 4, ShowTime, ImageDrive, WaveEditor and the Nero Toolkit.

The faceplace of our preproduction drive looks identical to the DRU-530A. Our press guide claims that the final version of the drive will also ship with a black replaceable faceplate. Unlike the Gigabyte GO-W0808A, there is no forward headphone capability.

Our largest surprise came when we noticed the chipset in our DRU-700A was the same found in the Gigabyte GO-W0808A, the MT1818E. This little chipset has been with DVD burners for a long time; the only real upgrades that have occurred since DVD+R 2X has been upgrades to the analog controllers and pickups. The same innards are found in the Lite-On LDW-812S.